The Bizarre 2-Ingredient Breakfast Marilyn Monroe Swore By

In 1952, Marilyn Monroe would rent a Spanish-style villa in the Hollywood Hills and meet one of her husbands, famous baseball slugger Joe DiMaggio. Before that, however, Monroe floated around various apartments and hotels in the City of Angels — and it was in one such hotel that she was photographed by "Pageant" magazine that year. Monroe shared in an interview that she'd adapted a fitness and wellness routine to the restrictions of hotel life, which included not having access to a stove. Specifically, she mentioned a breakfast that she credited with helping her stay healthy while managing her hectic schedule as a working actress.

"I've been told that my eating habits are absolutely bizarre, but I don't think so," she shared (via Into the Gloss). "I start warming a cup of milk on the hot plate I keep in my hotel room. When it's hot, I break two raw eggs into the milk, whip them up with a fork, and drink them while I'm dressing. I supplement this with a multi-vitamin pill, and I doubt if any doctor could recommend a more nourishing breakfast for a working girl in a hurry."

Raw eggs in milk? We're big fans of vintage-inspired backsplash tiles, but not so much a fan of drinking a potential cup o' salmonella. You should definitely drink water in the morning to get your metabolism going, but we can't help but feel sympathy pangs for Monroe's tummy with such a hard-to-digest meal on an empty stomach.

Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Baker in 1926. Her eating habits as an adult were influenced by midcentury trends, some of which can sound a bit bizarre to us today. Monroe admitted to liking a lot of protein in her diet — not unlike folks in 2025! — and took it in as lamb, steak, and plenty of liver, the latter of which has fallen out of fashion. She personally penned a recipe for a homemade holiday stuffing that contained liver, nuts, eggs, and raisins, but her preferred foods weren't all unrelatable. Monroe liked to treat herself to hot fudge ice cream sundaes (regardless of how they got their name), hot dogs, and Champagne.

Monroe was alive at a time when drinking raw eggs wasn't necessarily seen as risky. That cultural shift didn't really happen until a deadly and well-publicized salmonella outbreak in the 1980s. Adding raw eggs to a drink (even beer!) was seen as a healthy way to kick off the morning in the 19th century. In the 1950s, eggs were an especially affordable source of protein, and your average American ate lots of them. At this time, celebratory eggnog was still made with raw eggs, and First Lady Mamie Eisenhower shared a recipe for a popular chiffon pie that also contained them, uncooked. Simply put, Marilyn Monroe's breakfast of raw eggs wouldn't have caused folks to bat an eyelash in the '50s, no matter how dubious we find it when viewed with modern eyes and our knowledge of food safety.